Saturday, August 05, 2006

Sonic Youth - "Helen Lundeberg" b/w "Eyeliner"

Continuing on with my series of Summer 2006 7"ers...

Looking through the remains of their fabled Murray Street studio apparently yielded these two farewells to the LES lifestyle from Da Yoots... the press kit lists them as "b-sides" to the 2006 chill-noise-pop-rock of Rather Ripped but they seem more like underserved throw-aways that coulda blostered Murray Street. ...thankfully we don't have to wait another 15 years for such a re-ish. You can buy them for now as a vinyl-only 7".

"Eyeliner" is a recounting of Moore's real or imagined no-wave-glam urban punk sexcapades set in those romantic pre-Guliani NYC scumscapes. Not too surprisingly, it mixes the Catholicism and adolescent punk rock sex and needles fetish that characterizes much of Thurston Moore's Burroughs-like poetry - the lyrics actually came from a chap book of his.

Old man and father of a teenager Moore roosters about like Iggy or Robert Plant while the guitars simmer and burn in a sort of heaven Vs. hell dialogue. It would be laughable if it weren't well all so good and stunning and creepy and gnostic and surreal. And the band deflates all possible pretentiousness common to poetry-set-to-music-rock (hello, Jim Morrison) as someone spews background mental patient gibberish during the pseudo-chorus chord progression.

"Helen Lundeberg" was an obscure surrealist painter whose work progressed from pleasing calmness of illusionary surreal landscapes to more harder edge abstract pieces. The band explores Lundeberg's twofoldness musically while reciting from what appears to be a brochure from an exhibition. Oh, yeah. Does it sate your appetite for noisy squealing Sonic Youth drums-n'guitars? Yes. Doth it bring the noise? Why, yes, quite pleasingly.